Buddies in Bad Times Theatre is a Canadian professional theatre company. Based in Toronto, Ontario, and founded in 1978 by Matt Walsh, Jerry Ciccoritti, and Sky Gilbert, Buddies in Bad Times is dedicated to "the promotion of queer theatrical expression". It's the largest and longest-running queer theatre company in the world.
Jess Dobkin is a performance artist based in Toronto, Canada. She is best known for her 2006 work The Lactation Station.
The Edgy Women Festival was an annual festival of "short, highly physical works by women, often characterized by a transdisciplinary approach and politicized content." which ran for 23 years from 1994 to 2016. Presented by Studio 303, a dance and interdisciplinary-arts centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Edgy Women focuses on feminist perspectives with workshops and forums, performance events, and socializing. Studio 303's artistic and general manager Miriam Ginestier programmed Edgy Women from 1995 to 2014.
Alexis O'Hara is a Canadian transdisciplinary performer, born in Ottawa, Ontario, and currently living and working in Montreal, Quebec.
La Clique is a cabaret/variety show with Australian roots first conceived for the 2004 season of The Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It was originally performed in The Famous Spiegeltent with a small circular stage at fringe festivals, but since 2008 it was also performed for extended periods in permanent theatres keeping the same characteristic stage.
Ivan E. Coyote is a Canadian spoken word performer, writer, and LGBT advocate. Coyote has won many accolades for their collections of short stories, novels, and films. They also visit schools to tell stories and give writing workshops. The CBC has called Coyote a "gender-bending author who loves telling stories and performing in front of a live audience." Coyote is non-binary and uses singular they pronouns. Many of Coyote's stories are about gender, identity, and social justice. Coyote currently resides in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Melissa Madden Gray, stage name Meow Meow, is an Australian-born actress, dancer and cabaret performer who tours internationally. Gray has been particularly active in the UK where she appeared in La Clique at the Roundhouse and created the role of the Maîtresse in the West End musical adaptation of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg at the Gielgud Theatre. In 2010 Meow Meow was awarded the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Prize. In January 2011 she premiered "Meow Meow in Concert" for three nights at the Apollo Theatre on London's West End. She was named Best Cabaret Performer at the 2012 Helpmann Awards for her show, Little Match Girl. She debuted "An Audience with Meow Meow" at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in California as part of their Fall 2014 season.
Hysteria: A Festival of Women was a recurring arts festival in Toronto. It was founded in 2003 by Moynan King of the Buddies in Bad Times theatre company in collaboration with Nightwood Theatre.
Mo Bradley is a Canadian film director, producer, screenwriter, media artist, professor, and curator. They have produced over fifty short films and their work has been recognized internationally. Through their work, Bradley challenges traditional gender norms and opposes the heteronormativity that dominates the television and film industry. Bradley's focus is to bring nontraditional representations of sex, gender, and sexuality to the forefront of film. Bradley's work predominantly features queer characters and themes, including their first feature film, Two 4 One. In 2017, Bradley became a professor at the University of Victoria in the Writing Department.
Mirha-Soleil Ross is a transgender videographer, performance artist, sex worker and activist. Her work since the early 1990s in Montreal and Toronto has focused on transsexual rights, access to resources, advocacy for sex workers and animal rights.
Coral Short is a queer Canadian multimedia artist and curator. Based in Berlin and Montreal, they are best known for their performance art, as a curator of short film programs, and as a creator of affordable queer artist residencies.
Dayna McLeod is a Montreal based performance artist and video artist whose work often includes topics of feminism, queer identity, and sexuality.
Jess MacCormack, formerly known as Jessica MacCormack and more commonly known as Jess Mac, is a genderqueer interdisciplinary artist whose work deals with the intersection of institutional violence with personal traumas. They work with oppressed communities to create collaborative art that engenders agency, both personal and political. Their recent work covers topics such as criminalization, HIV/AIDS, sexual assault, mental health, racism, and transphobia, and utilize animation, video, painting, and collage. Their art integrates various elements of interactivity, performance, intervention, installation, and video, in order to engage viewers in a meaningful way; at the same time, they aim to destabilize high art and culture in favor of socially and politically engaged content. In exploring and critiquing institutional structures that create systematic oppression, MacCormack’s work is frequently both collective and collaborative.
Nathalie Claude is a self-described "actress, director, dancer, choreographer, writer, and a sometimes MC, Drag King, clown, artistic coach and musician" from Montreal. She works in French and in English and sometimes creates bilingual performances.
Karen Bernard is an American choreographer and performance artist. Bernard is the Founder and executive director of New Dance Alliance in New York City. Karen Bernard creates nuanced, movement-based work that explores divergent themes surrounding the female body—from motherhood to sex goddess to murder victim. Using sampled dance styles and episodic scenes, Bernard pits everyday life and current events against perceptions of the feminine mystique and aging. The work is developed in the context of location and an intuitive fusion of costuming, sporadic sound scores, video, and minimal sets. Unpredictable choices from the mundane to the extravagant translate into a form that compels my audiences to look at their own experiences from alternative perspectives which, in turn, can alter their actions and reactions.
Kay Turner is an artist and scholar working across disciplines including performance, writing, music, exhibition curation, and public and academic folklore. She is noted for her feminist writings and performances on subjects such as women’s home altars, fairy tale witches, and historical goddess figures. She co-founded “Girls in the Nose,” a lesbian feminist rock punk band that anticipated riot grrl.
Dainty Smith is a Toronto-based actor, playwright, and burlesque performer. She is the founder of Les Femmes Fatales: Women of Colour Burlesque Troupe, Canada's first burlesque troupe for Black women and women of colour, femmes and gender non-conforming persons. Her interdisciplinary work engages themes of glamour, afrofuturism, queer thriving, body positivity, and Blackness.
Kama La Mackerel is a Mauritian-Canadian multidisciplinary artist, activist, translator, and community organizer who resides in Montreal, Quebec. Their artistic practice moves between theatre, dance, spoken word and written poetry, watercolours, photography, performance, sculpture and installation. Working across multiple disciplines, La Mackerel's work explores their identity as a trans femme of colour who reaches back beyond the immediate constraints of the colonial circumstances of their life to the spiritual ancestral lineages of queer femmes.
Aiyyana Maracle was a Haudenosaunee performance artist, activist, theatre director, scholar, and educator. She is known for her contributions to the Indigenous performance art community. In 1997, she was the first Indigenous recipient of Canada Council’s esteemed John Hirsch Prize for emerging theatre directors.
Khadija Baker is a Syrian Kurdish and Canadian artist and performer who lives in Montreal.
